Michael Pliska

The past week I was preparing for Woodburn's epic 5 races in 3 days. I had a lot of work to do on the race car, camper & trailer. An allergic reaction and some tow rig lighting issues had other ideas.

In my 6500 or so prior passes in this car it's never been over 150 mph, where we have to wear a HANs or similar restraint, but made it with the new engine. This forced me to test my flexibility by putting on the restraint without the assistance of a crewmember. By the end of the weekend I made 9 passes in the 8's and 6 over 150 mph. My 1st RT was also a 0.001, apparently earning me "#1 qualifier" status, which when combined with $1.50 would get me a Costco hot dog!

One theme of the weekend was running into friends I haven't seen for years or decades, so it was a win regardless of the racing outcome. My friends Patrick & Rizza camped all weekend for the race. My bestie Sandra came out Friday evening along with our friends Tony and Joel.

I set up my karaoke system, and we proceeded to gather a pretty good crowd of singers and spectators. I apologize to anyone who was trying to sleep, I honestly didn't realize how late we ran!

Steve Kelly is one of the best bracket racers around but somehow I had managed to compile a 7:1 record against him. It's almost like I paid a voodoo Dr to put a curse on his race car... Steve wounded his race car this past week, so he was running a borrowed race truck. I won a fair amount of rounds for the weekend (round before the money in almost every race), but 4 of my 6 losses were to Steve in that truck! It wasn't that I was driving poorly against him, he was just doing it a tiny bit better each time! I'll be taking up a collection to make sure he gets back into his own car before the next big race, or to pay for extending a curse to a borrowed truck...
Continued below in comments.